336046 - Separate "report problem/author feedback" from "comment and review" for users

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(addons.mozilla.org Graveyard :: Public Pages, defect)

Description

[Mike Shaver (:shaver -- probably not reading bugmail closely)]

Many users use comments to indicate that there are problems with the listing or extension, in place of a bug-reporting system.  It would be good to provide a different means of reporting a problem ("doesn't install", "doesn't work", "bad description", etc.), so that they can be surfaced to authors and admins appropriately.  This would likely make the comments and reviews more useful to other users, as well.

Comment 1

[Cameron]

*** Bug 290900 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 2

[Paul Roub]

I know this came up already in bug 290900, but it bears repeating -- just moving the "View the homepage for this add-on." link front and center would make a huge different.  It is currently the very *last* thing displayed before the page footer.

Comment 3

[Mike Shaver (:shaver -- probably not reading bugmail closely)]

It might, indeed .  Stay tuned for a counter-proposal that would let people discuss and help each other with extensions even _more_, without requiring a huge amount of software development or taking valuable information and context off the site.

(I use public predictions of my own work as a way to add increasing pressure on me to finish my writing and circulating.  Please bear with me!)

Comment 4

[Bogdan Stancescu]

Re: Comment 2

It's pretty obvious to me that mozilla explicitly avoids exposing the developers. I assure you that NOBODY who's not a developer knows about that link, buried at the bottom of the page. I have a relatively low-popularity extension listed on addons.mozilla.org, and among the 450 hits on the project's homepage in the last week, NOT ONE has addons.mozilla.org as referrer.

Of course, that doesn't do anybody any good:

1. It doesn't serve the users well, because most people end up using the comments system to report bugs; since they need to also rate the extension in the process, the extension's rating is skewed one way or another, depending on how "generous" the commenter is;

2. It doesn't serve the developers well, because they don't get exposure for their site, which is probably in 99% of cases more suitable to handle the specifics of their extension than the generic listing on addons.mozilla.org; it doesn't encourage donations or other system of incentives for the developer; it doesn't allow developers to track their user base via web statistics;

3. If both users and developers are not happy, mozilla doesn't have any reason to be happy: the developers don't get proper feedback, receive no incentives and their ratings are skewed, therefore they will be less motivated to work on their extensions. As a result, mozilla is effectively working against one of the goals it asks addon developers to put efforts into: "foster innovation on the web" (http://wiki.mozilla.org/Update:Policy)

In my view, addons.mozilla.org should act as a nexus between users and developers; that involves channeling users towards the addons home sites, if both users and developers choose to, instead of keeping them on addons.mozilla.org at any cost.

Comment 5

[Cameron]

Bogdan, with Remora (AMO v3) we hope to implement a forum system with AMO that will enable users to discuss add-ons, seek support and report bugs. We will then have a separate interface to write reviews on add-ons, and possibly another separate interface to rate add-ons. 

We also hope to allow developers to view more complex download statistics for their add-ons with Urchin.

As always, Remora is very much in the planning stages, so the above is subject to change.

Comment 6

[Wil Clouser [:clouserw]]

Like Cameron mentioned, Remora does implement a forum system ("Discussions") if an author wants to use them for support.  This is separate from the "Reviews."  Marking this as fixed.